Powerful Earthquake Hits Afghanistan, Pakistan; Tremors Felt Across North India

Three people were reported dead in Afghanistan by Reuters. In Pakistan, at least nine people have reportedly died.

New Delhi: An earthquake of magnitude 6.5 hit parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan late on Tuesday, March 21. Tremors were felt across north India as well.

Three people were reported dead in Afghanistan by Reuters. The tremor was 194 km deep and its epicentre was in the Hindu Kush mountain range, near the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan.

In Pakistan, at least nine people have reportedly died, PTI is reporting, and at least 150 are injured.

Pakistan

Dawn reports that a 13-year-old girl was killed in the Madyan town of Swat district when a wall fell on her.

A man in Islamabad and a 13-year-old girl in Abbottabad died after cardiac arrests shortly after the earth quake. There were also reports of several injuries.

In the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, a 90-metre wall around a police station collapsed.

Afghanistan

Shafiullah Rahimi, a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s disaster mitigation ministry, told Reuters that two people had been killed in Afghanistan’s eastern Laghman province. One of them is a child.

While health centres have been put on high alert across the country, some presumably affected villages are quite remote.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross told Reuters that there were no immediate reports of damage in Badakhshan’s capital.